Al Qaeda Is Far From Down Or Out

Haven’t we seen this before? We move in, clear an area, turn it over or depart, only to see al Qaeda fighters comeback like so many cockroaches. We have over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan as we speak fighting under a generation of American commanders whose experience and degree of skill are arguably unmatched in American history. Our nation has been at war for over a decade with many troops doing two, three, four deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan or both. Folks, that kind of experience is hard to come by in ways of making war.

Still, we have failed to fulfill the mission mainly because the mission has failed our military. What are we fighting for? “To kill al Qaeda”, “To kill the Taliban”, “To limit the two and deny them territory”, “To stabilize the Afghan government”, “To win hearts and minds”, “To bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan”, “For the children so they can have Christmas this year.” You name it and that’s what we are fighting for. At some point you have to stop and ask yourself, just what in the hell are we doing over there?

Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan’s northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan’s uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.

American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and “al Qaeda is coming back” (WSJ: Al Qaeda Makes Afghan Comeback)

Now it would be easy to assume that myself and many others have turned against this war in opposition to President Obama, as if our principles go only so far as the party that occupies the White House. That would be a criminal thing to say, especially considering that I fought in Iraq and my brother has been deployed to Afghanistan — oh, I don’t know, three, or four times, now ? He lost a very close friend during one of those deployments. It boils down to really one final resolute point: Our military, no military for that matter, is equipped or trained in this kind of undertaking. Nor should it be. Notice I didn’t use war to describe the mammoth operation. It is an undertaking, an experiment. Meaning, it is green peace, peace corp, habitat for humanity, get out the vote, crossing guards, hall monitors, with a some military operations all rolled into one. When our top general admonishes the civilian population back home about the dangers of burning the koran because it may put US troops in danger, again, you have to ask yourself, just what in the hell are we doing over there?

Our troops are already in danger. They are at war, dear general. And by the way, generals should worry more about war than domestic politics. Now that I’m long out of the military I can say this: Pipe down general and color on your own paper.

John Hinderaker over at Power Line partners up nicely with my own thoughts.

I think it is. In the aftermath of September 11, we had no choice but to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al Qaeda’s training centers and kill and scatter as many al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists as possible. We did that, brilliantly. Bin Laden escaped by the skin of his teeth, but al Qaeda has never recovered from that initial devastation.

Since then, for going on nine years, we have pursued a somewhat half-hearted peacekeeping/democracy policy in Afghanistan. The Bush administration was right, I think, not to devote excessive resources to Afghanistan, which is virtually without strategic significance compared with countries like Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Moreover, the country’s human natural and human raw material could hardly be less promising.

Afghans are not just living in an earlier century; they are living in an earlier millenium. Their poverty, cultural backwardness and geographic isolation-roads verge on the nonexistent-are hard for us to fathom. They are a tribal society run by pederasts whose main industry is growing poppies. If our security hinges on turning this place into a reasonably modern, functioning country, we are in deep trouble. But I don’t think it does; and, in any event, I don’t think we can do it.

In large part, our effort in Afghanistan has been devoted to protecting normal Afghans against extremists like the Taliban. But, as the current rioting in Kandahar, Mazar-e Sharif and elsewhere reminds us, there there may not be a lot of daylight between the Taliban and more moderate Afghan factions.

None of this is to suggest that American forces have to cut tail and run. The last thing we want is Afghanistan to turn into a Jihad Mecca. Certainly not. We can still do really fun things like drone strikes, aerial bombing raids when intelligence is sufficient, and special operations from time to time just to let the bearded fighters know that we still have their number.